Because unless you are extremely wealthy, most authors don't want to spend 1-3 years on a passion project just to have it met by thunderous indifference.
To help hedge our bets, most of us will reach out to members of our audience, as well as potential members of our audience, and ask what it is they'd like to see. It sounds like a good practice, since it should take the guesswork out of figuring out what people want, allowing you to make sure that at least part of your audience is going to be ready and eager for your project when it drops.
The problem is that a lot of people will say one thing, and then do another. And I mean a lot of them!
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| Which makes giving the stamp of approval to one thing over another a difficult choice. |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
I cannot count the number of times I've spoken with fellow creators who've had fans stridently demand something, given them what they asked for, and then found that no one was willing to actually support that project once it was completed. For example, I've had people say that they don't read short stories, but they'd love to hear an audio drama version of my book The Rejects... despite that, though, those folks didn't check out the audio versions of either the Weird Western Dead Man's Bluff or the dark modern fantasy story Suffer The Children, even though both of them are from that book, and they are free to listen to on my channel The Literary Mercenary. My partner and fellow author Alice Liddell (whom you should go follow on YouTube at Alice The Author if you haven't yet) has had readers tell her with enthusiasm that they'd love her to write something darker, more historical, and with vampires... yet when her book Succumb To Darkness dropped, there was only a fraction of folks who loudly proclaimed it was exactly what they wanted who showed up to buy a copy.
Every author, RPG designer, YouTuber, blogger, and general creator that I know has had to deal with this problem, and it is one of the most exhausting things that crops up time and time again in this profession. Because if you have hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of people who all say they'd love to see X, Y, or Z project made into a reality, then you would expect them to actually turn up to check out the project when it's done. And even if all of them don't, you'd expect maybe half of them to give it a look, right?
Well, as I said in my recent Tabletop Mercenary episode, Audience Support is a Reverse Iceberg, you're lucky if 1 in 10 people in your audience sees that something when it exists, and then if as much as 1 in 10 of those people actually does something to support it.
This is where I'm going to repeat something I've said time and time again on this blog, and which you likely heard in the video above if you watched it (which you should, it's an important topic). In short, creators need the support of their audience if we're going to keep making art. Period, full stop, end of story. If you don't show up for the artists you love, then eventually they're going to give up, and you won't get anything else from them. All we can do is make the art... we depend on you to actually appreciate and consume it so we can get paid at the end of the day.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that you need to subscribe to every Patreon for the creators you like, or that you need to buy every book and every piece of art they come out with. That's ridiculous. Yes, it's always good to directly support artists by throwing money at us (we appreciate it very much), but that's not the only way to show your support.
Other things you can (and should) do include:
- Engaging with things creators make (watch videos, read articles, etc.)
- Subscribe to their social media pages, channels, etc. (so your presence weighs on the algorithm scales)
- Boosting their social media signal (leaving comments, heart reacts, sharing posts, and so on)
- Leaving reviews and ratings on the things you do buy
Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important... if you're going to lend your voice to a call for a project, please be sincere about it. You don't have to throw a handful of Benjamins at someone's Kickstarter, or be the first one to get their new art print or plushie, but don't pull a Morbius and say you really want something, only to be a no-show when the creator puts in the work to try to give you what you asked for.
Because Sony might be able to eat that kind of ghosting... but most artists, authors, and others who are just trying to scrape by really can't.
Support The Literary Mercenary
If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!
- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)
And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!
Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!
Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.
